A Tale of Two Visions

It may be a truism to say that a clash between two broad and diametrically opposed visions of society underlies virtually all democratic political debate. Yet these polar world views are seldom explored systematically; few thinkers, in this polemical and analytic age, are concerned with charting the metaphysical divide between these great watersheds of the mind or with locating the headwaters of their moral and political currents.

In A Conflict of Visions, Thomas Sowell, an ec...